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Anything that works in practice can work in theory. When a theory tells us something that is working is impossible, we’ve either measured wrong or the theory needs updating. Theories exist to explain, predict and understand. They are supposed to help us see and improve the world around us, and they’re never finished, just ever […]
yesterday

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More from Seth's Blog

After you make a strategic error

Of course, we make strategic errors all the time. Not enough time. Incomplete information. A fast-changing system. Sooner or later, a significant strategic error occurs. Don’t beat yourself up. Now what? The real problems occur after the error is made. Don’t follow a strategic error with an investment error, or an effort error or a […]

8 hours ago 2 votes
Mostly unreasonable

It’s tempting to go to an extreme. Unreasonable design standards, quality or hospitality are an effective way to gain share, delight customers and spread the word. To be unreasonable in service of your customers is a practice and a commitment. Along the way, though, reality sets in. The boss has multiple priorities. The uncompromising edges […]

2 days ago 4 votes
The menu

A while ago, I ate in a restaurant that had no menu. The waiter simply walked over to the table and said, “what do you want?” As bold as statement as this is, it made many diners uncomfortable and often led to people ordering without much imagination. Around the same time, I found myself in […]

3 days ago 5 votes
The order and the medium of feedback

Who do you pay attention to? Do you respond or react to the feedback that’s coming in? Do you seek it out or wait for it to arrive? Does vivid online feedback from anonymous trolls carry more weight than honest but more subtle feedback from actual customers? Pick your feedback, pick your future. Which sort […]

4 days ago 7 votes

More in creative

Hundreds of Medieval Medical Manuscripts with Strange Cures Get Digitized & Put Online: From Leeches to Crushed Weasel Testicles

If any discussion of medieval medicine gets going, it’s only a matter of time before someone brings up leeches. And it turns out that the centrality of those squirming blood-suckers to the treatment of disease in the Middle Ages isn’t much overstated, at least judging by a look through Curious Cures. A Wellcome Research Resources […]

9 hours ago 2 votes
After you make a strategic error

Of course, we make strategic errors all the time. Not enough time. Incomplete information. A fast-changing system. Sooner or later, a significant strategic error occurs. Don’t beat yourself up. Now what? The real problems occur after the error is made. Don’t follow a strategic error with an investment error, or an effort error or a […]

8 hours ago 2 votes
Hear the Pieces Mozart Composed When He Was Only 5 Years Old

A preternaturally talented, precocious child, barely out of toddlerhood, in powdered wig and knee-breeches, capering around the great houses of 18th century Europe between virtuoso performances on the harpsichord. A young boy who can play any piece anyone puts in front of him, and compose symphonies extemporaneously with ease…. Few scenes better capture the mythos […]

yesterday 3 votes
Mostly unreasonable

It’s tempting to go to an extreme. Unreasonable design standards, quality or hospitality are an effective way to gain share, delight customers and spread the word. To be unreasonable in service of your customers is a practice and a commitment. Along the way, though, reality sets in. The boss has multiple priorities. The uncompromising edges […]

2 days ago 4 votes
An Introduction to Aleister Crowley, History’s Most Infamous Occultist

“Do what thou wilt”: as the central principle of a worldview, it may not sound like much, but at least there are always a great many people ready and willing to hear it. So discovered Aleister Crowley, the early twentieth-century Occultist now remembered not just for his unconventional religious practices, but also for his knack […]

2 days ago 4 votes